


Seventeen Years After: An Archimage Fanfic

by Akycha



Category: Archimage, Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akycha/pseuds/Akycha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fanfic of a fanfic, or a meta-fanfic.  Utena and Anthy some little time after the end of events in Jude's <i>Archimage.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventeen Years After: An Archimage Fanfic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Archimage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/107797) by [Jude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude/pseuds/Jude). 



I pinched the bridge of my nose, a gesture I usually tried to avoid. "Anthy. My love. Tell me again why our daughter -- who may have some issues but who is, at least to the partial eyes of her mom, relatively good-looking -- does not have a date for her prom?"

Anthy was sitting at the inlaid eighteenth-century desk at her home office, which was furnished mostly with items she had selected from her antique business. She was still dressed in a suit and heels from work and looked as though she ought to have been wearing stylish little reading glasses to go with her little pearl earrings and the jade bangle I had bought for her last birthday. However, she wasn't. She leaned one elbow on the desk, smiled at me, and said, "You had that faculty meeting today. Why don't we change out of our business suits?"

I looked down ruefully at the button-down shirt and wool pants I was wearing. "These pants itch. How do you always know?"

Anthy's mouth dimpled on one side. "When you stand in that particularly upright way I know you either want to stretch or scratch. Come and change."

Despite this distraction, I did want an answer to my question. "So about this prom thing," I said, after I had unhooked Anthy's bra for her.

"Utena, she doesn't _want_ a date. Don't pester her." Anthy dropped her "housedress" over her head, a sort of loose muumuu thing she had made herself from scraps of shawls, worn-out skirts, silk handkerchiefs, bedsheets, and one of my old shirts that had gotten too shabby to wear. It ought to have looked awful, but Anthy made it look immensely elegant somehow.

I put on shorts and a T-shirt. I am not immensely elegant, or elegant at all. "Are you sure she's not just saying that? I mean, maybe she wants to reassure us after what happened... you know. The Cafeteria Incident."

Anthy put her feet gratefully into a pair of shabby black slippers that flapped so hard when she walked that our daughter had irreverently dubbed them Hugin and Munin. "We agreed not to discuss the Cafeteria Incident any further. I am sure it was just a coincidence, and young men will fight."

"So will young women, apparently," I muttered to no one in particular as I put my sneakers on.

Anthy elected to ignore that. Probably for the best, really. "There are a lot of reasons why she might want to go to prom alone, and lack of potential dates is _not_ one of them," she said, dropping her earrings into the tray on her dresser with a little click. 

I followed her downstairs, protesting, "But it's traditional!" An argument I knew at the time was futile.

Our house, a narrow three-story Victorian on an out-of-the-way street in Cambridge, is furnished in what you might call an "eclectic" style. I objected to most of Anthy's antiques on the grounds that I wanted furniture I could put my feet up on and which I didn't need to worry about breaking; also, small child, 2 dogs, 3 cats, and monkey. (Please don't ask me how we managed to keep Chu-Chu in Massachusetts. It was only after I got my current job that I realized that "exotic" pets are illegal in this state, but I suppose Anthy just manages all that. Somehow.)

So we have a house furnished with antique rugs (Anthy insists they're sturdier than modern ones) and a mix of Ikea furniture and odd pieces Anthy brings home, like the cast-iron hall tree she dared me to try to break and the haunted document box our daughter finds so amusing. Anthy's current business started when we she saw an enormous old dollhouse in the window of an antique store fifteen years ago, and she walked in and purchased it for Chu-Chu. The owner was so impressed with her knowledge that Anthy went back later and inquired about jobs, and today runs her own business, which is how she prefers to do things anyway.

"It's Thursday," said Anthy. "My turn to decide dinner." She turned on the kitchen radio, switched it from NPR to the classical station, and then opened the freezer and stood staring reflectively at the contents. 

I wisely decided to drop the "traditional" argument. "Anthy," I pleaded, while she looked at blocks of frozen spinach and two pints of Ben & Jerry's Caramel Core ice cream as though she might make dinner out of them, "say something reassuring."

Anthy removed a package of frozen tuna steaks and tossed it into the sink. "Why?" she inquired, as if she really wanted to know. "You know I'm terrible at it."

I gently banged my forehead against the smooth polished surface of the refrigerator door while she filled the sink with hot water and plugged the rice cooker in. "I just want our daughter to have a normal high school experience," I said to Naoto, the biggest and most elegant of our rescue dogs, whom I suspect of being part Borzoi. Naoto gave me a very sympathetic look, at least in part because the dog treats were stored on top of the refrigerator.

Anthy fitted herself against my back and slipped her hands around my waist. "Why?" she asked again, in my ear. "You didn't and you came out just fine."

I tried to answer this but nothing came out but a rather sad little squeak.

Anthy laughed a little, breathy in my ear. "You worry too much," she said. "Her school is not going to turn into Ohtori at the drop of a teacup."

"That's not what I'm worried about," I muttered.

"Utena," Anthy murmured into the back of my neck, "the daughter we've raised for the last sixteen years is not going to suddenly turn into... _big brother_ \--" The tone she used was like a needle so sharp you didn't feel it go into your skin. "...just because a number of young people are competing for her attention."

"I know," I said, hoping I did. "I just..."

Anthy snorted delicately into my hair. "She's never going to be the charming fool you were, but she does have a certain kind of oblivious charisma she gets from you."

"I am not sure," I said, turning around and putting my arms around Anthy, "if that was a compliment."

Anthy laughed soundlessly into my shirt collar. "It was," she said. "Are we going to make dinner, or...?"

"Or?" I inquired of her hair. It smelled of old perfumed wood, and new earth, and roses. Also a little of scorched rice. "Did you put enough water in the rice cooker? _Any_ water?"

Just then the front door banged. "Moms!" shouted Uzuki from the front hall where she was dropping her hockey equipment on the floor instead of putting it in the closet. "Odette showed me her shoes and I am in DESPAIR." I heard her throw her backpack onto the battered church pew that served as a boot bench, then gallop through the living room, pausing as usual to knock on the door of the dollhouse: "Hi, Chu-chu!" Arriving in the kitchen doorway, she grabbed both sides of the frame and posed dramatically like the star of an 'eighties music video. "I cannot believe I FORGOT."

"Forgot what?" asked Anthy, peering into the rice cooker and then pouring in water from the big measuring cup. Steam billowed out and we all coughed.

"I don't have any SHOES that match my OUTFIT." 

I frowned at the muddy vision of my daughter, who was in sock feet and practice shorts. "Yes, you do, they wouldn't let you practice without cleats."

"I mean for the PROM, Mom." She sighed, stuck her lip out, and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "And I NEED a haircut."

I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said. "We have a little more than a week, there's no need to panic."

Uzuki flopped down in one of the kitchen chairs. "I'm going to wear a white tuxedo," she announced. "With a red vest."

There was a little silence. I looked eloquently at Anthy, who was suddenly very interested in how the tuna was thawing. Our daughter looked at me; I could see her half-puzzled, half-hopeful expression out of the corner of my eye. In the kitchen doorway, Chu-chu appeared, wearing his favorite purple velvet smoking jacket and carrying a rose. "Chu?" he inquired.

"Thank you," said Anthy, and took it from him. It was a white rose, of course.

I pinched the bridge of my nose again. Anthy began to laugh. Uzuki said, "What? Mom? Mama? What's so funny?"

Anthy walked over and peered up at our daughter, who was already taller than she was by several inches. "You get more like your Mom every day," she said fondly.

"Really?" I said, exasperated.

"Really," said Anthy. "After all," she added cryptically, getting a bag of pre-packaged salad out of the refrigerator and looking at it with mild surprise. "I can think of many people who wouldn't _dream_ of going stag to a dance but you, Utena, are quite brave enough to do so."

_"Anthy,"_ I said with unexplained but intense embarrassment. Anthy spun towards me merrily, flinging the salad bag in the general direction of our daughter (who caught it with a whoop), and ended up leaning her elbows on my chest and smiling up at me, her eyes narrow with mischief. One hand pressed the rose to my chest; the thorns, I suppose, made it cling.

The music on the radio faltered for a moment and then shifted to a waltz. It was a familiar one, of course.

"I don't expect you to dance alone, though," she added, taking my hand and putting it on the small of her back, as a hint.

Before I quite knew what was going on, I found myself waltzing through the kitchen and dining room, Anthy smiling up at me and our daughter applauding us from where she sat on one of the high stools around the kitchen table. It was ten thousand times as magical as anything that had ever happened at Ohtori, despite the fact that I kept kicking Nanami's catnip rainbow and bumping into chairs.

When we finished, breathless, in the kitchen doorway, Uzuki said, "You know I love you, moms, but boy can you be embarrassing sometimes."

"That," said Anthy, calmly standing on tiptoe to kiss me, "is on purpose."

**Author's Note:**

> Uzuki, their daughter's name, means approximately Heaven's Moon, and uses the same kanji as Utena: 宇月.


End file.
